Under the Pressure
by deke-core
Summary: When Bobby unknowingly puts the New Recruits in danger, he must save them the only way he knows how.


Hello all - Deke here, and this is going to be my first X-Men Evolution fanfic. This is only going to be a short one-timer, so don't forget to review when yer done and maybe I'll write more!  
  
The title of this fic also comes from song lyrics from the band " Dead to Fall" from the song "Graven Image." The whole line from that song goes like this, ' I say in a small and frail voice/ I will not fail under the pressure/ when I try to turn away/ I learned I have failed"  
  
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Under the Pressure  
  
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The first blizzard of the year hit Bayville with a sudden ferociousness that the city's snow plows could not cope. Despite the fact that the city workers battled the storm all night long, by the time morning broke, the streets were still hopelessly covered and school was cancelled for the day. The students of Xavier's Boarding House woke up early to discover that they could all go back to their warm beds and sleep in on that bleak Monday morning. Many of them, upon hearing the news, did not even stay up for an early breakfast and went straight back to their rooms.  
  
Other students peered out their windows at the blanketed world - dismissing the fact that there was a blizzard - and hurried as best as they could to get on enough warm clothes to be able to go out and be the first one to make tracks in the snow.  
  
Hank McCoy had been curious about exactly how frigid the storm had been, and after a short investigation of the lake behind the mansion, he returned to the mansion. Though coldness never bothered him now that he had let his mutations surface, he still went straight for the kitchen for a cup of something warm after his excursion.  
  
Xavier, as well as most of the students who had decided to stay awake, were also in the kitchen, drinking a-most-appropriate-for-the-weather hot chocolate.  
  
" It was quite a blizzard last night," Hank said to Xavier as he entered the kitchen, "I found four feet of snow in some places. Even the lake has frozen, merely overnight - "  
  
That last sentence immediately gave the students in the kitchen the impression that he promised a day of ice skating.  
  
" All right, Mr. McCoy!," an exuberant Kitty exclaimed, " Ice skating is a great idea!"  
  
" Just wait, now, I didn't promise anything yet," Hank said, defending himself, " I can't be sure that the WHOLE lake is frozen, or if the ice is even thick enough for ice skating."  
  
" That's no problem," Bobby replied, a cocky smile on his face as he cracked his knuckles. He shook his hands after he did this with a subtle, "Ow."  
  
" Come on, Mr. McCoy," Jubilee pleaded, she did not want to miss out on the fun.  
  
" The lake is not going to be safe for ice skating after one night's worth of freezing," Hank said, " There is no way that the ice will be thick enough to bear your weight. I'm sorry, but you're just going to have to wait - maybe a week's worth of temperatures like these and it will be safe enough."  
  
Most of the students soon lost the idea of ice skating - but definitely not Bobby. He wasn't going to let something as simple as the thickness of the ice keep him from having fun on his day off of school.  
  
He left the kitchen with a wink to his friends, and they all met in the hallway outside.  
  
" Who wants to go ice skating?," Bobby asked them with a smile. A smile also passed on the faces of Jubilee, Cannonball, and Multiple.  
  
************  
  
" What does he know? The ice is thick enough," Bobby said to himself as he skated out across the lake on ice skates that he fashioned himself out of ice. He stopped where he was and skated back to his friends, who were still at the shore lacing up their skates.  
  
" So, what do you think?," Cannonball asked when Bobby returned.  
  
" Totally fine," Bobby said.  
  
" Are you sure?," Jubilee asked, " Mr. McCoy is usually right about these kinds of things."  
  
" Hey, come on, this is Iceman you're talking to," Bobby said defensively.  
  
" You're not afraid are you?," Cannonball added in a coaxing voice.  
  
" No!," Jubilee shouted back.  
  
Bobby turned on his heel, pointed his hands down towards the surface of the frozen lake, and shot a blast of ice out at least twenty feet from where they were standing. The blast created a track of ice that went into a perfect loop in the shape of a corkscrew. Bobby smiled and turned back to the other mutants.  
  
" Come on, last one through the loop has to clean my room!," Bobby said as he sped off on his skates.  
  
" No fair!," Jamie protested, he had only managed to get on one of his skates, but already Sam and Jubilee were in hot pursuit of Bobby.  
  
Bobby was the first one to reach the loop - he did have a big head start. He stopped skating just as he reached it, and with the speed he had already obtained, he coasted through the loop in a crouch. He slid from the loop and onto the surface of the lake with a triumphant smile.  
  
Bobby turned around to see who would be next through the loop - Sam and Jubilee were both neck and neck. Sam definitely did not want a girl to beat him, and he held out one of his arms to make sure that Jubilee stayed behind him. Jubilee slowed down for half a second in alarm, which gave Cannonball the advantage.  
  
With a sudden burst of speed, Sam rocketed into the loop - one flip through the ice track and he stopped by Bobby's side.  
  
Jubilee was the last , but the look on her face was one of pure determination. Cannonball had not been fair, she told herself, and she was going to prove to the boys that she was just as capable as them.  
  
The fact that she had slowed down just a few moments before when Sam had pushed his way past her, though, was not a good sign. As she skated into the loop, it was already clear that she was going too slowly to be able to complete the track.  
  
As she was upside down in the corkscrew, she lost the speed she needed and she fell.  
  
Jubilee hit the ice on her back, and cried out in alarm and disappointment. She had just failed in front of Bobby and Sam, and that made her feel ashamed.  
  
She was only on the ice for a moment, though, when she noticed a faint crackling sound. Bobby and Sam were laughing too hard to hear it. Jubilee slowly tried to stand up to get away, but the force she used to push herself up from the ice caused it to shatter even more Bobby had noticed Jubilee just as she was struggling to stand up - he noticed the danger she was in. With a cry of alarm, she disappeared below the surface of the water.  
  
Bobby acted too late - the moment that he noticed the ice breaking, he shot forward a blast of ice, hoping that this would keep her from falling. But he had acted too late - the ice didn't reach her until she was already under water - and now there was a sheet of ice where her only escape was.  
  
" What are you doing?!," Sam cried out, and with a leap forward, he threw himself through the ice and rocketed right into the water. Bobby skated forward to the newly created hole and looked down into the water. The surface was still.  
  
A moment later, both Sam and Jubilee found their way to the hole, both with a big gasp for air.  
  
Jubilee began coughing wildly, Bobby grabbed for her hand to pull her out of the water, but she did not want to let go of the edge. Coldness never affected him, but he could tell that the water's temperatures were freezing. Already she was beginning to tremble, her lips turning a slight blue.  
  
" Here, take my hand!," Bobby pleaded, because Jubilee was not responding to his voice.  
  
He reached down and took a hold of her forearm, and struggled to pull her out of the water. It was surprisingly difficult. He would never have thought that he would have a hard time dealing with her weight, but the water on her arms made his grip slip.  
  
At the same time, Sam was trying to lift her out of the water. He finally decided he would be of better help if he was out of the freezing water, and tried to pull himself out as well. Every time he tried to use enough force to rise himself out of danger, the ice below him would crack and break again.  
  
He became panicked when he realized that he could not escape.  
  
The water was so cold that even after a few seconds of being in it, he began to feel his concentration leaving him. The icy temperatures were drawing away what strength he had, but he knew that for someone like Jubilee, it must be much worse.  
  
Sam resorted back to helping Bobby help her to escape.  
  
Just then, Jamie arrived, finally getting on his other ice skate and hurrying as fast as he could to help his friends. Though it probably would have looked funny to an onlooker - he skated directly into the wall of the loop that everyone had been competing over only a minute earlier. As soon as he hit the wall, the ice became littered with 10 more Jamie's.  
  
At this time, Bobby already had a hold onto both of Jubilee's arms, yet even with Sam's help, they weren't getting too far. Jubilee's teeth were beginning to chatter and her hands were numb.  
  
" Come on!," Bobby shouted out in desperation, and pulled her arms as hard as he could. He paused for a moment in his rescue attempt when he noticed that a parade of Jamie's were there to help.  
  
" Here!," he shouted, as three of the multiples grabbed one of Jubilee's arms. The rest of the Jamie's skated over to Cannonball - despite the fact that Jamie was only 12, he was still confident that with enough of himself he would be able to help out.  
  
With Bobby, Sam, and 3 Jamie's - they finally were able to muster the collective strength to pull Jubilee out of the icy water. Bobby took control over her rescue while the rest of the Jamie's went back to Sam's aid - Bobby dragged her as far away from the hole in the ice as he could. Then, he stopped.  
  
He heard that sound again - the ice cracking beneath him.  
  
But this time he was prepared not too fail. Using his powers, he held out his hands and shot a blast of ice down onto the surface of the lake. He created a powerfully strong layer of ice that would not shatter under the pressure of himself and Jubilee - but he had forgotten about the others.  
  
Bobby looked up just in time to see that the ice could not hold up under the weight of the 11 Jamie's - the ice shattered and all of the multiples disappeared underneath the ice.  
  
" No!," Bobby shouted out. This was starting to get ridiculously desperate. How was he going to help them now? Instantly, he knew that this had been a very, very bad idea.  
  
Bobby stood up, and quickly took off his jacket. He never felt coldness, but he had worn a jacket nonetheless - he draped it over the shivering Jubilee. It didn't really appear to make any sort of an impact.  
  
He turned away from her and looked at the new hole in the ice. Bobby felt his heart sink when he realized that there was no way that he could do this - there were twelve people who were now caught in the ice, and he had had such a problem dealing with two.  
  
" Jamie!," Bobby shouted as soon as he reached the edge of the hole in the ice, " Combine some of these multiples, okay?"  
  
One of the freezing Jamie's only shook his head and replied, " It's too cold."  
  
Bobby understood - while Jamie was in multiples, everything that happened to him would happen tenfold once he became one again - which meant that if Jamie was too try to call back his multiples now, he would be ten times as cold. And that would definitely kill him.  
  
Bobby was now panicking. What was he going to do now?  
  
He used his powers to make the edge of the hole in the ice much thicker - it was useless for the victims to try to pull themselves out of the water if the ice kept breaking. Bobby suddenly got an idea, and once again he used his powers.  
  
This time, he made a staircase underneath the ice leading up to the surface.  
  
" Finally, a good idea," Sam said, but his teeth were chattering so much that Bobby couldn't understand any of his words.  
  
It only took a minute before everyone got themselves out of the water - but Bobby's problems did not end there. How were they all going to get back to the mansion? He knew that there was no way he was going to get himself out of trouble this time.  
  
And none of the others were helping too much either. Now outside of the water, they were huddled together and shivering. The wind was picking up - every breeze that hit the victims felt like a shock, like an ice cold hand reaching into them and freezing them from the inside.  
  
Soon, everyone except for Bobby was suffering from extreme hypothermia, all of them shivering as if in convulsions and slowly loosing awareness of their surroundings.  
  
Bobby just stood where he was - in a state of shock at what was happening, as if he did not believe anything he saw. He was hoping that he would be able to bring everyone back to the mansion and act as if nothing had happened. But that would be impossible now - no one even wanted to move.  
  
Finally, Bobby, his heart at a panic, called out to Xavier, pleading for him to send help.  
  
Hardly a second passed and Kurt teleported to the ice.  
  
" Vat happened?," Kurt asked, looking at all the mutants in confusion.  
  
" No time for questions!," Bobby shouted, " Take Jubilee first!"  
  
In another moment, both Kurt and Jubilee were bamfed away - leaving nothing of their presence left except for the smell of brimstone. Bobby was once again alone with these victims.  
  
" Maybe I'll be warmer if I bring them back," one of the Jamie's mumbled softly.  
  
" No!," Bobby shouted at him, " You know you can't do that! Just wait a second, Kurt'll be back in a second."  
  
Kurt 'ported back just then. Hardly a minute passed before all the freezing mutants were brought back to the mansion. The only one left was Bobby.  
  
Kurt 'ported back once again, but Bobby held up his hands defensively.  
  
" I'll just walk, that's okay," he mumbled and walked back Kurt, too ashamed of what he had done to take the easy way back.  
  
He trudged his way through the snow, feeling miserable. Why had he gotten so carried away? All his friends were now frozen and sick - but at least they were alive. If it hadn't been for Kurt, they would probably have died.  
  
What if this had happened too far from the mansion for anyone to help? What if he had tried to be this care-free somewhere where no one could have saved them?  
  
Bobby kept walking, head hung low, staring at the snow on the ground.  
  
He had been completely irresponsible. He was no longer worried about getting in trouble - that hardly mattered anymore. Bobby could not get beyond the fact that he had coaxed his friends into a situation that could have gotten them all killed. Just because he could not have been hurt by the coldness. Would he have dared to do this if he was not a mutant?  
  
Was he that careless - that he would only have put his friend's lives in danger if he would be safe from it.  
  
Bobby stopped, someone was blocking his path.  
  
Bobby looked up, and realized that Scott was standing in front of them.  
  
" Hey, what are you doing still out here?," Scott said in a concerned voice.  
  
Bobby didn't say anything - wasn't it obvious?  
  
"Everyone's looking for you, Kurt said that-," Scott started, but Bobby interrupted him.  
  
" They could have died," Bobby said sadly, " And it would have been my fault."  
  
Scott said, "Look, everyone makes mistakes. The important thing is to learn from what we've done wrong so that we don't make the same mistakes again. Look, you were there to help them, and under the pressure, you did pretty well."  
  
" I did?," Bobby asked, somewhat hopeful.  
  
" Yeah," Scott replied. "Come on, let's go back to the Mansion."  
  
Bobby felt somewhat better - if Scott thought that he handled himself well in a crisis, then that was something important gained. He still felt terrible at what had happened, but as he walked back to the mansion, Bobby couldn't help but feel a tinge of happiness at Scott's words.  
  
" Does that mean I'm not in trouble?," Bobby ventured.  
  
" No, you're still in trouble," Scott said with a smile, " But not in THAT much trouble."  
  
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Well, that's the end! What did you think? Should I do another X-evo fic? Please review!  
  
Hugs - deke! 


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